What’s causing all the swimming records to fall?

DPA Beijing, Aug 13 (DPA) World-class swimming is drowning in record- breaking performances. More than 60 new records have been set so far in the 2008 season, and the Olympic competition in Beijing isn’t even over yet.

Feats like those in China’s capital — where 16 world records fell alone in the first of four days of Olympic finals — have not been seen since the Olympics in 1976 in Montreal.

Could it be doping? New technologies? Scientific discoveries? Around the edge of the swimming pool at Beijing’s futuristic “Water Cube” swimming venue, there are many theories.

“What’s happening here, under normal circumstances, is not statistically possible,” Germany’s top coach, Oerjan Madsen, said. “The times the swimmers are clocking here are knocking the long-term statistics on their head.”

Experts in the sport are having a hard time coming up with an explanation. Several factors taken together could be the cause, they say.

“I think the main reason, though, is to be found in training based on science,” Madsen said. “Fewer mistakes are made because of it.

“There are also more and more full-time professionals in many countries who live from swimming and are able to pursue the sport in a completely different way.”

German International Olympic Committee vice-president Thomas Bach struck a similar line, speaking of a combination of the new suits and improved sports science.

“The flood of world records was already expected before the Games started,” Bach said.

Dirk Lange, the German coach of South Africa’s Olympians, named another reason that has always proved a winner at past Olympics: “The top people have a killer instinct.”

A combination of all these factors must be what allowed the US teams in the 4×100m and 4×200m freestyle relays to smash the records by huge margins of 3.99 and 4.72 seconds,respectively.

The US athletes have worked for years with the George Washington Institute to achieve the perfect butterfly kick.

As a result, Phelps, who by dint of physique and many other characteristics already is the best all-around swimmer of his time, has achieved unbelievable high speeds on his turns and has had world records in all his five events so far in Beijing.

With perfect starts and turns and low-drag, high-buoyancy racing suits, “it became clear we would see a deluge of records,” Lange said.